17:12 EST, 9 July 2013
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04:36 EST, 10 July 2013
Steve Harmison sat on the members' benches at Lord's and reflected that things were not always so serene. The Ashes, as we know, is a Test series that does strange things to people, and not only the players.
'I remember walking through the Long Room here on the first morning of the 2005 series and I had never seen anything like it,' recalled Harmison.
'The first thing I noticed was that they were all awake! Usually the members are snoozing or looking at you as if to say, "Why have they picked you again?" But this time they were all up for it, in a big, big way. They were all on their feet, shouting and screaming as we tried to get to the field. It was like a football crowd and you had to barge your way through.
'That was the one and only time I've
ever enjoyed walking through the Long Room and you knew then that this
was a special series. That was the way it proved to be that year.'
Similar emotions will no doubt come to
the fore at Trent Bridge as the 2013 series gets under way. As always,
the early psychological blows are important.
Scroll down to watch video of that memorable delivery
Harmison will watch with interest. It was he who set the tone in England's 2005 series win by striking Justin Langer on the elbow with the second ball of the game, then removing Ricky Ponting soon after striking the Australian captain on the grille of his helmet.
'I regret that part,' said Harmison, who
went on to take 17 wickets in the Ashes win. 'I hit Ricky and cut his
cheek and none of us went to see if he was OK. That was wrong.
'At the other end, Langer said to Andrew
Strauss, "Are we in a war or something?". There is a line you don’t
cross and we crossed it that morning. Just.
'To me, you play hard but you play fair. We didn’t actually realise how badly Ricky was hurt. We didn’t know there was blood there and by the time we did realise it was too late. I was back at my mark. But we didn’t do ourselves justice.
'It didn’t affect me in terms of the
next ball and I got him out soon after. You couldn’t write the script
any better from a fast bowler’s point of view. But that doesn’t mean we
didn’t go too far for a split second.
'Ricky never complained of course. He
is a tough man. There are few tougher. And he is arguably the best
batsman I ever bowled to.'
Harmison believes there is no-one with Ponting's aura in the current Australia team.
'I keep hearing that this is the
worst Australia team for generations,' he said, at a wine-tasting
evening hosted by Laithwaite's Wine at Lord's.
'But they are following Warne,
McGrath, Ricky, Hussey, Langer, Hayden, so what do people expect? I
would fancy bowling at these ones every day of the week.
'But I am proud that I took the
previous generation on. I feel I played in a good team myself, and
against one of the best teams that ever walked on to a cricket pitch.
'If we are honest, then beating
Australia is not England’s toughest test now. That is to conquer the
Subcontinent, and then to go and beat South Africa over there.
'If England can do that then the sky is
the limit for them. I want to see this lot come up against the best.
Then people can say how good they are.
'I
believe this team can be as good as they want to be, if they want it.
And I think they do want it. This team have had a great 18 months but I
think they are bound to have an even better next 18 months.'
In his benefit year at Durham, Harmison
has hardly played any first-team cricket and he will, in all likelihood,
retire in September. His views are still as direct as his bowling,
though. He fears too many of this summer’s pitches will be ‘chief
executive’s pitches’, designed to stretch a Test to five lucrative days
rather than encourage entertaining cricket.
He feels Kevin Pietersen should be indulged by the ECB as long as he delivers and that Australia batsman David Warner should have escaped serious censure for hitting Joe Root in a bar. ‘That was a fuss over nothing,’ he insists.
For the record, Harmison, 34, predicts a 3-1 series win for England with Australia winning one of the first two Tests.
He has his own recollections of the moment he dismissed Michael Kasprowicz with Australia two runs short of a miracle win in the second Test in 2005. It left Brett Lee stranded on a heroic 43 not out and Harmison recalled: ‘Me and Andrew Flintoff hit Brett on every part of his body from Saturday afternoon to Sunday morning. Every part of his body must have been stinging, but Brett took it with courage and he was brilliant.
‘He was like that all series. He typified what Australian cricket had been like for 25 years.’
VIDEO: Harmison's bouncer rattles Ponting
Laithwaite’s Wine are an official Partner of England Cricket. For more information, visit www.laithwaites.co.uk